One God Less
We have all heard the argument of One God Less.
It takes a form something like this:
You Christians do not believe in Zeus or Odin or Osiris, neither do you believe in the gods of the Hindus, nor the Aztecs, nor the gods of Shinto. Indeed, there are a thousand gods in which you do not believe.
Whatever your reason is for you not to believe in those thousand gods, that reason is sufficient for me not to believe in your one.
You are just as much an atheist as I am when it comes to Zeus or Odin or Osiris. I am merely an atheist toward one God more than you.
It is an argument that is too clever for its own good. It sounds tricky as elfin glamor, but falls to pieces at the slightest touch of the cold iron of logic.
By analogy:
There are a dozen theories about the Kennedy assassination. We all reject eleven of them. But I reject one more than you, and believe Kennedy is still alive. I believe in one less assassination than you.
Or, if you like,
There are two basic theories of the solar system: heliocentric and geocentric. Heliocentrism rejects one. I reject one more, and believe there is no solar system. I believe in one less solar system than you.
Do we see the problem with the argument?
The argument has three flaws.
1. Ambiguity. Two different beings are called by the same name. Pagans believe in theoi (gods) who in nowise are depicted as omniscient, omnipotent, or eternal. They are the children of older gods or titans, or sprang from chaos. Monotheists believe in the Supreme Being (God), the I AM WHO AM, a necessary being and unmoved mover, the uncaused first cause. Jehovah is not a theoi, and not in the same category as theoi.
2. Definition by Nonessential. If I refuse to worship demons because they are unworthy of worship, and refuse to worship idols becuase they are manmade fictions, this reason for my lack of fealty would not and does not apply to any being worthy of worship and not fictional.
3. Irrelevance. The unspoken assumption in the argument is that the reason why monotheists should not and do not worship devils is the selfsame reason why atheists do not worship the Supreme Being. This is simply false.
Atheists claim that a lack of physical evidence concerning metaphysical reality invalidates belief in metaphysical reality… a self evident absurdity. Atheists are moved by the spirit of the times, which supposes spirits not to exist. This is not the reason monotheists rebuke pagan deities.
Monotheists rebuke pagan deities because we worship the Creator, not created spirits, not manmade fictions. Pagans, for their part, worship the gods of their ancestors, and do not trifle with alien gods, or perhaps regard them as their own gods, merely called by other names.
The entire mindset and approach of the monotheist differs so remarkably from either devil worshipper or science worshipper that the whole analogy on which the argument rests evaporates in a gust of laughter.
The whole argument assumes the monotheist disbelief in pagan gods is due to his unadmitted atheist skepticism and belief in science.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not and never was science worship that impel the monotheist, ancient or modern, to dismiss the gods of Rome or the totems of barbarians of North or the Far East. It is scorn of totemic practice, of idolatry, that turns Christians into iconoclasts.
In fact, it is Christianity that makes skepticism and belief in science possible in the first place. The scientific method is a unique cultural artifact of Christendom. Every other culture welcomes astrology, witchcraft, and so on. Only Christianity forbids superstition.
The monotheist may or may not disbelieve in the pagan gods. He may believe they exist, but despise them as demons. But the monotheist does not, if he is rational, disbelieve in demons because he believes in science.
Or he may believe some or all do not exist, because idols are mere statues of stone or brass, who do neither see nor speak nor move, and cannot save. (Please note this argument has been current since the Bronze Age, as it appears in the oldest sections of the Hebrew Bible.)
This is not a claim that can be made against the one God of whom no idols are ever made. The argument that Christians reject idolatry, but atheists reject Christianity by rejecting one more idol, assumes Christians invented their God, and make idols to him.
This is not only an insult the Christians, it is actually an insult to the idolaters as well, for it fundamentally misunderstands what it is they did. Idols were statue forms that received the honors normally paid to kings, it was done in order to hold the king to a quid pro quo, where one would receive favors in return. It was, in effect, an attempt to capture a divine being, and render him predictable, and subvert him to human will: the very opposite of worship.
The pagans certainly have no reason and no habit of disbelieving in the pagan gods of strangers and foreigners. They merely do not sacrifice to the gods of foreign cities for the same reason they do not salute the flag of a foreign Nation.
Moreover, the one God has forbidden the worship of other gods. The atheist cannot claim his non God has forbidden him from worshiping the one God.
So the argument fails again on this ground: the reason why we do not bow to false gods is that the True God ordains otherwise. This is not the reason why the atheist bows to no gods.
That the Allah of the Muhammadans, the childless Jehovah of the Jews, or the non-trinitarian God of the Mormons or Arians differs from the trinitarian God of the church has no bearing on this argument, since it is an open question as to whether these are different opinions about a real God as opposed to different gods, some real and some not.
The “one god less” argument is not really an argument as much as a word game. It is irrelevant, based on a bad analogy, and involves more than a little psychological projection.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
